Categories
Fun stuff

Still relaxing

The view from the bar on deck eleven. It’s the first real cloudy day we’ve had. No rain though.

I’m sitting in a bar on deck eleven. Behind me, two women have a private dance class.  They’re dancing to Footloose.  I’m not even watching. I’m sitting, facing a full window.  There’s a little patch of grass outside. I can’t determine if it’s real or fake.  It looks real, but I cannot possibly see how the crew can maintain it, so it’s probably fake.  But it’s the realest looking fake grass I have ever seen.

Past that is the sea, and off in the distance I can see land. (I think. I need binoculars to be certain.)  Everyone is at lunch, so up here on the eleventh deck it’s blissfully peaceful.

We’re cruising, and life is relaxing.

The South China Sea is like a millpond.  It’s funny to realise that although we’ve cruised before, we’ve always cruised on the ocean.  This is our first sea, and the ship doesn’t roll much at all.  (This ship is so smooth you can’t even tell when it moves away from port unless you’re actually watching.)

We’re into the last week of our overseas holiday.   Next week we’ll be jet-lagged, but home.

It will be good for the blog, at least. On holiday, it’s hard to think of anything but holiday posts. 🙂

Categories
Fun stuff

Sailing out of Singapore

There are a lot of boats in Singapore harbor.

Sailing out of Singapore. Boats everywhere. Or do I call them ships?

Our internet will be a little erratic for the next two weeks.

Categories
Writing process

An exercise in world building

Tomb Raider territory. Ta Prohm temple. It was lovely here, mid-afternoon, so quite shaded.

Every life experience is grist for the writing mill, writers are told.  Write what you know.

Right now, we’re in Kampuchea (Cambodia). We’ve visited a number of places in the Angkor heritage area—Angkor Wat (temple), Banteay Srei (temple), Angkor Thom (village), Ta Prohm (temple).

So I decided to take some of our experiences of the last few days and use it as a writing exercise.

Not all of it, for otherwise this would turn into a homage on the engineer(s) who designed Angkor Wat—so heavy its foundations can’t support it, except for that fact they built a massive moat around it (190m wide and it forms a rectangle 1.5 km x 1.3 km) and the water mixes with the earth underneath so it acts like quicksand.

 

Mid-afternoon, Vianne made Stephan quicken his pace.  “Gates close at sunset,” she reminded him.  “Otherwise we’ll be stuck outside till morning.”  With a hundred cutthroats eyeing their well-made linens, wondering just how fat the purses around their necks were.  And another hundred touts trying to get them to stay at ‘their’ establishment.  For a nominal cost, of course, and probably no longer any purse to pay with in the morning.

“It’s twenty years since I was last in a city that locks its gates.”

“You know your trouble, Stephan.”

“Peace has made me soft.  I know.”  But he quickened his pace.  “If I go any faster even my sweat will be sweating.”  He sighed, a long, heartfelt moment of anticipation. “I’ll be glad to get these boots off, at least.  “

Vianne had changed to sandals two weeks ago.  And long linens to cover her legs so they didn’t get burnt.   She’d insisted on the linens for Stephan as well, but she’d let him keep his boots.  There was only so much you could do for a southerner before they stopped listening.

A trickle of her own sweat obscured her vision.  The sweat was rust-coloured.  As was she, top to bottom.  Her legs were red. Her feet were red.  Her robe was red, and ready to stand up by itself.

She wiped the sweat away.

“And into some clean clothes,” Stephan said.  “I’ve sweat so much I can’t even take a shit without fighting to get my pants back on.”

Vianne just wanted to wash her hair. Or shave it off.  It was thick and heavy, and weighed her down.

They reached the gates with the last of the stragglers.

The guards—perhaps sensing strangers—crossed pikes in front of them.  “You’re too late for tonight,” the darker woman on the left said.  “Gate’s closed.”

Anyone care to take a guess at which bits were actual experience, and which bits were made up?

Categories
Writing process

Writing on the road

Relaxing at Lang Co, somewhere between Hue and Hoi An. Beautiful. Perfect place to write, and actually got some writing in.

This holiday was supposed to be a combined writing/travel holiday. We planned to write the first draft of the second Uncharted Stars book (not yet confirmed as the book to be accepted, but we want to do a quick first draft to see how it goes).

Our tour—and we did book a tour, this being our first time in south-east Asia—supposedly had every two spare days out of five, and lots of spare time.

That hasn’t been the case.  Today is the first day we’ve been able to sit down and write.  Busy, busy, busy.

We’re having a great time, but definitely not writing much.

Still, I planned to write every day.  So, I have.  Even if it was only one sentence.

Categories
Writing process

Learning to cross the road in Hanoi

The traffic in Hanoi. Take a deep breath and have faith. Above all, don’t think about what you’re doing, because if you think about it, you’ll be overcome with fear.

I wasn’t planning on writing about Vietnam (or anywhere on our travels). If you’re interested, Sherylyn will be posting on Facebook, but we’re here, and the other blog I planned is trite and ordinary. Or maybe I’m just in holiday mode, so you might get more holiday posts after all.

Anyway. Vietnam.  Hanoi.  The traffic!

The lady who met us at the airport was lovely.  “Some advice,” she said.  “Crossing the road.  The traffic here in Hanoi can be daunting. Just copy what the locals do, cross when the locals cross. And if you start to cross, don’t hesitate.  Just keep going.”

Believe me, if you need one piece of advice for Vietnam, that’s the advice you need.  Even on the way into Hanoi proper people ran red lights, cut across in front of our driver and did all sorts of crazy things.  We both agreed, we’re never going to drive in Vietnam.

After we booked in to hotel, we decided to go for a walk.

This was Saturday afternoon, mind.  It was crazy, and as for the pedestrians, they just stepped out into the middle of it all.  It was terrifying.

We ended up going around the block, because we were too scared to cross an actual road.

So this morning, we spent a couple of hours practising crossing roads.

It’s a big leap of faith, and still scary as anything, but we managed it.

Now we have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

Categories
Book news Writing process

Aurealis Awards

Came home tonight to find we’ve been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for best sci-fi novel.

It’s such an unexpected honor to be nominated. We’re almost expecting them to come back and say, “Oops, mistake. Sorry.”

Unexpected, but not unwanted. We’re thrilled to be in such exalted company.

Look at the competition.

Congratulations to everyone else for their nominations. (And not just the sci-fi novel. There’s some great stuff here.)

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Categories
On writing

Getting the writing habit

Maybe it’s the caffeine, but something helps

I don’t know why it is, but I do my most productive writing on the train on the morning commute, and in coffee shops.

Food courts and McDonald’s restaurants are my offices-away-home.

I have stopped doing my most creative writing at home.

When it comes to editing, however, the opposite applies.  I do that best at my desk, with the full size keyboard and two monitors, where I can easily switch between my notes and the work-in-progress.

In an ideal world, one would be able to write anywhere, any time.  And sometimes I can. When I’m on a writing roll the only thing that stops me are work deadlines.

(Work deadlines are a real writing strangler.  As in—I really don’t want to get off this train because I’ve already done 500 words on my commute, and I know if I could keep writing I would rack up another 500 in the same amount of time, but I have to go to work. So why don’t I sneak into this café for a quick coffee and do some more writing—But the guilt sets in. How do I explain being so late? And I now have to work the extra time at the end of the day.  (Lucky my hours are flexible.)  Oh, coffee is finished and I’ve only done 50 more words.  Sigh.  I should have gone straight to work.)

Part of the reason I can write so well on the commute and in cafes is because I’ve trained myself to do it. Years of pulling out the laptop as soon as I sit down on the train, or immediately after I’ve ordered coffee. My brain knows these are the signals to start writing.

Categories
Writing process

Cool weather – hooray

 

Not much of a blog today. We’re both recovering from a drive north.  The temperature up there was 42.3 C (108F), and we had no air conditioning in the car.

Hot is an understatement.

The drive back today was bliss, for the weather had changed.

Actually got a couple of story ideas out of it. Extreme weather conditions. We’ll let them germinate a while, see if any characters attach themselves to the story. If, in a few years time, you get a story from us about the weather, you’ll know this was where it started.

I’m off to have a snooze. It was too hot to sleep last night.

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Categories
Progress report

Books and other news

A progress report, today, and a glimpse into the publishing industry from the writer’s end.

Draft two of Stars Uncharted

We’re onto the next major draft of Stars Uncharted.  This is officially draft two for us, although if you count how many rewrites we’ve done so far, it’s a lot more than that.  We used to count each draft separately, but nowadays we mark them by the big milestones.

  • Draft one—get the story down
  • Draft two—fill in any story holes, nail the action scenes (even if they still need rewriting, and they do)
  • Draft three—incorporate any feedback from Caitlin (our agent), if any; add more world building
  • Draft four—clean out the weasel words*, tidy up
  • Draft five—read aloud

* We don’t use the term weasel word as per the dictionary version. For us, it’s shorthand for cleaning out all the wryly’s (ly words), changing from passive to active, getting rid of all those ‘,too’s, and so on.  Also, World building is not so much just making the worlds more realistic, it’s also building the characters, too.

They’re not clean ‘finish draft one, start draft two’ as they’re written above.  For example, Sherylyn was already working on draft two while I finished draft one, and she’s already cleaning out every weasel word she comes across.  (Sadly, more creep in.)  Even in draft one we went back and rewrote story holes once we knew they were there.  And we try to world build every draft.

We also read aloud chapters on occasion even now when we know the language isn’t working.

At the end of this month we’ll send a (relatively) clean copy to our agent for her input.

It’s starting to feel like a real book.

Contract

We signed the contract for Stars Uncharted (and a second book) yesterday, and sent it back to the publisher.

Those of you who have been reading our blog might notice that back in December we mentioned the books were coming (but only after it had been announced in Publisher’s Lunch, and Locus), and we knew about it a while before that.

In fact, until we get a copy back with the publisher’s signature, nothing is truly formal even yet.

This is normal.  While you’re writing the book, your agent is busy working in the background with the publisher getting the contract in order. For the Linesman books, we didn’t get a contract to sign until about two days before we had to deliver the book.

How an editor works

If you’re interested in how the book process works from the other side, over at Unbound Worlds, Matt Staggs interviewed Anne Sowards about working with Patricia Briggs.  Anne’s our editor, too, and that’s how it works for us, as well.

Categories
Books and movies

Finally saw Rogue One

Finally saw the Star Wars film, Rogue One.

I enjoyed it, thought it on a par with The Force Awakens.

I’m not sure why people say it’s outside the main Star Wars series. To me, this fits right between Episodes III and IV.  Episode 3.5.  (Or is that III.V?)

The ensemble cast of characters in Rogue One was excellent.  Every single one of them could have carried their own story.

In fact, two of my favourite characters will be included in a middle-grade novel (that’s right, middle-grade) called Guardians of the Whills.

If you haven’t seen the movie, these two are the best.

(Jyn also gets her own young-adult novel, too.)

The ending (which I’m not going to talk about, because, spoilers) was the hardest part of the movie to take. I understand it had to happen that way, because this was episode III.V and it had to work in with what happened in IV, but …

It’s one of the difficulties of writing an earlier episode in an already-existing movie series. Or in a book series.

You have to work with what’s already there. And what’s not.

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